Understanding the colonial roots of Indian management thought: An agenda to decolonise and theorise for Indian contexts

Abstract

Despite several calls to develop indigenous theories to contribute to Indian management knowledge, there has been limited success. There is no well-developed alternate Indian paradigm in management that can sustain a rigorous research programme and be relevant to practice. We argue that the intellectual colonisation of Indian academia due to the prevailing Eurocentrism (and US-centrism) and the use of English as a language for research and dissemination of knowledge are two key reasons underlying this failure. We demonstrate this by illustrating the near absence of scholarly work on Kautilya’s Arthashastra despite its wide acceptance in popular writings in India and its use in management practice. Finally, we suggest strategies to achieve intellectual decolonisation or intellectual freedom to enable scholars to engage with Indian issues and phenomena using indigenous knowledge perspectives and to contribute to an indigenous paradigm that might provide unique insights into managing the Indian way.